Two months ago, I received my copy of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook the third book by Gary Vaynerchuk. This book is not something that small business owners and entrepreneurs should read, it is something they should live by. Since I promised Gary that I would review the book, here it is. If you enjoy my notes, I would seriously recommend buying the book.

If you have no idea who Gary is, he is one of the best business minds in the game right now. He grew his family liquor store, WineLibrary, from $3 million to $45 million per year by being an early technology adopter and most importantly, caring about his customers.

The best story Gary has ever told about customer service (something I want to do once Flannel Farms grows bigger) is about how his company treated a new customer that made a huge wine purchase on his website. Through some google searching, they found the new customer’s twitter account. The guy lived in Chicago. and was absolutely in love with Jay Cutler, quarterback for the Bears. How WineLibrary thanked their new customer changed my view on how companies should treat their customers.

WineLibrary went on Ebay and bought an autographed Jay Cutler jersey to send to their new customer. Could you imagine having an online store send you something out of the blue that you would absolutely love? I can guarantee that guy will be a customer of WineLibrary for life.

Above is a great video of Gary being interviewed by Keith Ferrazzi (author of Never Eat Alone, which is one of my favorites) It’s a fantastic read about building relationships that will help you succeed in whatever way you choose.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

JJJRH is largely a how-to guide to using the most popular social networks to tell your story. It would be silly for me to tell you all of the details, but the most important thing is to be native on each platform.

What does this mean?

Use beautiful pictures on Instagram with lots of hashtags

Post engaging, share-able posts on Facebook

Listen, and interact with others on Twitter

Use animated GIFs on Tumblr

Use ‘collectors item’ pictures on Pinterest

All of our feeds on these platforms in incredibly noisy, so you need to be memorable to grab someones attention in a split second. This is why being native is so important. For example. this post won’t do well on twitter, because it links out of the app. Very few people care enough about what I have to say to leave the twitter app to read a 600 word blog post.

But if I take the picture on the top of this post and put a quote from this post, many more people will consume the information. (If I do that, let me know if this theory is correct.)

Get this book as guide to use things right now, but as Gary says:

Meaning that the advice in the book will be out of date in 12 to 24 months. But that’s the fun of business. Its a nonstop competition. This book will give you an edge right now.

The most important lesson from the book is that high quality content is the barrier to entry in today’s world. So what that I’m writing this blog post, why would anyone care what I think about a book?

Because if you’re reading this, I guarantee we have some kind of contextto our relationship. Its the single reason I’m writing this post, because Gary took the time to response to my tweet 2 months ago. How do you develop that context? with Jabs. Another way to say the book title is: give, give, give, ask. Land the right hook once you’ve provided so much for free that your customers feel guilty for how much you’ve help.

And context is the key to business in this noisy social world.

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If you enjoyed reading this, hit me up on twitter @AlexLipinsky or leave a comment below

I’ve never made New Years resolutions before, but this year felt different. I’m out of school now and I’ve been searching to get into a good routine. So a large part of what I want to accomplish in the next 365 days is develop habits for the rest of my life.

Main Goal for 2014

Develop a consistent morning ritual. Right now that is wake up at 5:30, body weight workout with a few kettlebell exercises, make coffee, and spend 30 minutes on personal development.

This is a modified version of Cory Gregory’s Up Early to Train, with my real workout coming later in the day. I find that I have my best workouts in the mid afternoon.

Athletic Goals

Bench 450

Deadlift 600

Squat 565

Run a sub 6:00 mile

Run 10 miles without stopping

To make the year a lot more interesting, and to work on my weak self discipline, I’m participating in 12 monthly challenges for 2014.h/t to reecepacheco.com for this idea. I really like the idea of doing something new each month of the year.